Solutions for Accounting share a Case Study on Berkhamsted School

Carey Dodd

28 September 2017

The Background

Berkhamsted School, founded in 1541, is one of Britain’s leading Independent schools. Situated in the town of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, it is a day and boarding school offering both single sex and co-educational teaching.

The Challenge

Correct billing for student fees is imperative to Berkhamsted School. A pupil’s school fees can get paid by a number of different sources: parents, extended family members and companies, which can lead to admin and accounts inaccuracies. Being a very large school, Berkhamsted has 1,927 pupils – which can equate to a lot of extra work. Duplicating work from admin to accounting software is time consuming and also leaves room for mistakes.

Solutions’ Approach

To eradicate the current challenges, we were confident that our self-written connector module between the iSAMS Fee Billing module and Sage 200 accounting system would smooth out a lot of the school’s data duplication and remove errors. The ‘Sage Accounts Connector’ module is designed to provide a seamless integration between the Fee Billing module within iSAMS and Sage 200, giving Berkhamsted School greater control and flexibility over the management of their billing, payments and statements. With careful planning, project management and training we ensured there would be as little disruption with the transition as possible. We also knew that Spindle Document Management, a Sage 200 add-on, would help to provide complete control over all the incoming and outgoing documents, reducing the workload and ensuring that important documents are always to hand.

“The training was outstanding, it was the highlight of the process.” Peter Nicholls, Vice Principal Business Operations.

The Outcome

We understood that integration and having one connected system was of prime importance to Berkhamsted School. Not only from an efficiency point of view, but also because an integrated system means fewer errors, a clearer overview of Sage 200 and the Fee Billing module and clear traceability of students and their outstanding fees.

“We have greater control and confidence now our systems are integrated. The pupils and their fee billing now correlate and supplier invoices are all scanned on to one system very quickly, enabling queries to be dealt with faster.” Peter Nicholls, Vice Principal Business Operations.

Client Testimonial

“Using iSAMS integrated with Sage 200 has opened up doors for us to do more with our software. We are now on a system in which I have great confidence; Sage is futureproofed, which opens us up to many more software possibilities to help our finance team add value and insight to the school as well as processing transactions more efficiently.

“With less duplication, there is more time saved, and less potential for error, meaning there are fewer queries each month. I am very happy with the decision we made to move over to iSAMS and Sage 200 accounting software.” Peter Nicholls, Vice Principal Business Operation.